Best New England Clam Chowder

Everyone in New England has a recipe for clam chowder. This recipe has evolved over the years. The flavor is very strong and the taste is heavenly. This photo was soft shell steamer clams. Any type of fresh clam can be used with equally tasty results. If you live on the west coast, razor clams, manila clams and gooey ducks can be used, but you’re on your own for how many to use. Manila clams are very much like littlenecks. You could probably make the whole chowder from one gooey duck.

Preparation time: Soak clams 2-3 hours, prep 1 hour

A Forward on Buying and Selecting the Best Clams:

The best clams are the clams you dig in the clam-flats at low tide. Ok. We can’t all do that. So the next best clams are the clams someone else dug that same day and they’re willing to give you some or sell them to you. The next best is a trustworthy fishmonger. I’m fortunate to have a fishmonger who digs his own clams and sells them out of his truck every Friday. Now I know fishmongers are going to say anything to get you to buy their fish, so you still have to be careful, but this old guy has been selling seafood for a long time and he has a loyal clientele, including my very seafood finicky gourmet cook cousin, so he has a good reputation.

The next best way to get clams is to pick them over yourself at a fish market where you can select the clams that look happy and healthy. If you are at a supermarket and the clams are prepackaged, you can still test them by giving a little squeeze. If the necks move, you’re ok, but you will still have to sort them individually before you steam them.  If the seafood person selects them for you ask him or her to make sure they’re alive. High volume supermarkets generally have good quality and high turn over so they’re generally pretty reliable.  I’ve only had to return clams to the supermarket once because I had so many dead clams it was disgusting, but that only happened once. If your fishmonger has more than one variety of clam ask which is the freshest or select the freshest looking variety. If you see a lot of dead clams on ice, avoid them entirely.

All clams must be alive, not just living, but very lively happy clams.  The shell should be closed tight. For soft shell “steamer” clams, if the neck is sticking out, tickle the clam, it should retract the neck and close up tight.  If the neck is limp, the poor clam is on it’s last legs. Discard it. If the shell stays open when you squeeze it, he’s dead, say a few kind words and discard it too. Test every clam you have before you steam them because a dead clam can spoil the taste of the broth and give you digestion problems.

A medium shell clam can be found in Maine. They’re called Mahogany clams. They are yellowish brown.  Mahogany clams are very inexpensive, but they have a short life and tend to spoil quickly. When I can buy them in the supermarket, many are dead on the ice, so buyer beware. I avoid them, especially when the price is too good to be true. They’re probably trying to get rid of them before they spoil.

Hard shell clams come in different sizes (and ages).  All hard shell clams should be closed up tight. If the shell moves at all when you squeeze it, don’t select it, and if you already own it, discard it before you steam them. The best hard shells are gray to grayish white in color. The youngest are called “littlenecks”. They’re about an inch to inch and a half in size. The next larger size is the “Cherry Stone”, they’re roughly 1.5 to 2.5 inches in size, and the largest size is the “Quahog”, 2.5 to 5 inches size.  There are even larger deep sea clams, but not something you’d see in the clam flats and in local markets.

(Just an aside- Quahogs were a staple of the early Native Americans in New England. They prized the purple color on the inside of the shell and made beads with the purple shell and called it wampum. The wampum beads were used as jewelry and currency because they took a lot of labor to make. When metal drills were acquired from traders, the process to make them became very efficient and the wampum beads became devalued as they became more numerous. Early settlers would buy large parcels of land in Massachusetts with a handful of wampum beads.)

Ingredients:

4 pounds of steamer clams, or 4 dozen  “Little Necks”, or 2 dozen “Quahogs”

3-4 medium red potatoes

1 large sweet onion

2 tbs butter and additional 2 tbs optional for creamy chowder

4 tbs sea salt

crushed pepper to taste

1 cup of water

1 cup of store bought clam juice

1 cup of cornmeal or polenta meal

1 cup of heavy cream (optional)

2 tbs flour (optional)

Optional- 1 strip of uncooked bacon (chopped) or 2 tbs sized cube of salt pork

Preparation Time:  2-3 hours of soaking & 1 hour of prep

Preparation:

The clams can be cleaned before they are cooked by placing them in a pot covered with water with sea salt and cornmeal. Stir and place in the fridge, or add ice cubes to keep the water cold. After about 2-3 hours they digest the cornmeal and the bellies are a white and clean. This produces a clearer broth. The only downside to this process is some flavor is lost. If the clams are freshly dug, the taste of the ocean is preserved by not cleaning them with cornmeal. If they’ve been lying around on ice in a store for a few days that fresh ocean aroma is gone by then, so you may as well feed them cornmeal. The bellies taste sweet and they aren’t as gritty.

Remove the clams from the cornmeal solution and rinse well. If they haven’t been soaked in cornmeal, give them a thorough washing to remove the residual mud and grit.

Add 1 cup of water to a large soup pot and a steam grate to keep the clams out of the water. Add the clams. Place on high heat covered. When steam forms, turn down to med-high and cook for 7-10 minutes or until the shells open. Small clams cook faster. Large clams take longer. Leave the cover slightly ajar to prevent the foam from boiling over. For chowder, undercooked clams are ok. They’ll be cooked again when the other ingredients are added.

Remove the meat from the clams being careful to retain the liquid, and set the clams aside.  If large clams are used, dice the meat into smaller portions. Steamers can be whole or separated into necks and bellies. Dice large necks if you prefer smaller pieces. The steamers have a long neck with a skin. To remove the skin pinch the clam at the base of the neck with one hand and strip the skin off with the other. The littlenecks are much easier to clean, but all clams have some skin that has to be removed.

Dice the potatoes and onion. Slowly drain off the broth from the clams into another bowl, rinse the pot to remove the grit. If you use bacon or salt pork, add to the pot with 1 tbs of butter and onions, and simmer until onions are translucent, then replace the broth in soup pot. Add the potatoes, and enough clam juice to cover the potatoes if needed, and crushed pepper (it’s best to take about 2 tsp of whole peppercorns and crush them coarsely rather than milling the pepper) if you grind the pepper, use much less- 3-4 twists). Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are soft (approx 10 minutes)

Add the clams and 1 tbs of butter to the pot and allow 3-4 mins to cook in on med-low heat.  Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. This makes low fat, clear clam chowder.

If you want creamy clam chowder, melt 2 tbs of butter in a sauce pan on med heat, add 2 tbs of flour, stir quickly until blended and bubbling as a roux, then slowly pour in 1 cup of cream, stirring until thick and creamy. Stir into the chowder and simmer for 2-3 minutes before serving.

Serves 6-8 generously